National Network for Equitable Library Service

No Safeguards, the first in a trilogy, follows Jay and his brother Paul from childhood to young adulthood. We witness the destructive impact of fundamentalist Christian beliefs on their mother and father, opposition to those beliefs by the boys' grandmother and each boy's very different response to their parents' religiosity. This becomes even more poignant after they leave their grandmother's comfortable home in St. Vincent to join their mother in Montreal.

Peace Tower is about the struggles to adjust to the first year of marriage. Mark Trecroci and Jennifer Drury, a young couple in love, learn what it means to uncover the reality behind the love. Living in Ottawa, under the shadow of the Parliament Buildings, the young couple go through the painful process of trial and sacrifice to achieve a working peace. F.G. Paci is best known for Black Madonna (1982), a powerful feminist novel. Peace Tower is his twelfth novel. It is also the seventh in the novel series that began with Black Blood (1991).

A realistic portrayal of the Sicilian fishing community in San Diego in the 1950s, Confetti for Gino centers around the DeMarino family, in particular fishing boat captain Gino DeMarino’s stubborn attempts to break away from tradition by vowing to marry a woman from outside the Italian community, and his mother’s fight to ensure he marries someone within the community. The novel shows how kinship and family proved more visceral than the notions of individuality and independence that were emerging at the time.

Bianca Lakoseljac’s debut novel, The Summer of the Dancing Bear, is a mesmerizing melange of love story and mystery, as young protagonist Kata explores the unfamiliar world of the gypsy tribe that has befriended her and embarks on a quest to discover the fate of a neighbour’s missing child. Memory and magic play their roles until the shocking denouement that reveals Kata’s own family secrets and forever alters her perceptions of life as she once knew it.

Night is falling, and so is the snow. As the blizzard buries the ground, it uncovers the resentments, hopes, and aches of a small town in northeastern Arkansas, where, like in any Southern small town, there are unwanted pregnancies to agonize over, surgeries to be paid for and love to be made. Julie's two daughters have just run off to Hollywood to be famous when she suddenly finds herself, at forty-six, unexpectedly expectant. She's not sure she can bear to be a mother again. And her husband, Charlie, won't come home to talk it over with her.

It is the summer of 1999, and the Sweltham family leads an ordinary suburban existence. Former high school volleyball champ Parker crisscrosses the continent as a sales rep for DynaFlex Sporting Goods, while his wife Trixie serves as the managing editor of Record of Truth, an unsuccessful genocide studies journal. Their son Owen has just returned from juvenile prison to the vast horrors of high school. Heath, Parker's brother, has vowed to cut down on weed and fried chicken for a regimen of self-improvement. All appears normal.

On an isolated island in Lake Ontario live twins Lucy and Levi and their father, Daniel. While Daniel desperately mourns for his dead wife, Levi and Lucy grow up ever more entwined in their enchanted childhood of fairy tales and rhymes. But when a fissure in the fragile cocoon of the family explodes into a chasm, each of the three is hurled in a different direction. Soon, there emerges a geographical triangle - Vancouver, Montreal, the island - that also maps out the terrain of love and the territory of family.

A daughter of Jewish refugees searches for love and a spiritual home in this novel by the National Book Award-nominated author of Difficult Women. Brought up in a secular household on Manhattan's Upper East Side, Nancy Green knows suspiciously little about her parents' past. She knows they escaped Germany, avoiding the fate of so many of their fellow Jews during World War II, but the few family heirlooms they brought to the United States are reminders of a lost life that, for Nancy, remains shrouded in mystery.

The National Book Award-winning author of The Women of Brewster Place explores the secrets of an affluent black community. For its wealthy African American residents, the exclusive neighborhood of Linden Hills is a symbol of "making it." The ultimate achievement: a home on prestigious Tupelo Drive. Making your way downhill to Tupelo is irrefutable proof of your worth. But the farther down the hill you go, the emptier you become ...

I'm crying again, Mum. I'm crying because I don't know how many letters I have to write to say goodbye to you. More than anything, I wish I knew. Seventeen-year-old Rhea Farrell has scars from a childhood accident in which she lost her arm. But she also carries scars that aren't so visible-the loss of a mother she hardly remembers, the impact of her father's drinking, and her confusion and pain around accepting her sexuality. When Rhea runs away, she turns to the person she's always wished she could confide in: her mother.